


Symmetry

by self_indulgent_authorship



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Farore is also cool, Gen, Gift Fic, Hylia's a sham in this one, Hylians are imperialists/colonizers but we been knew, Original Character(s), Pre-Breath of the Wild, Selectively Mute Link (Legend of Zelda), Zonai, Zonai Link, as in like the 10k years ago peeps, because why not?, but Zelda's cool, but we'll see when that happens okay, i now have several headcanons about the Zonai, i'm making up lore as i go, i've become too powerful, the Zonai are great and not extinct, this could conceivably be added onto, we STAN
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27768160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/self_indulgent_authorship/pseuds/self_indulgent_authorship
Summary: The Zonai are meant to be gone—extinct—eliminated. Hylians, if they have not already, erase them from the history books and whisper about the mysterious ruins dotted around the continent.Hylian whispers can never be trusted, though, least of all when it comes to the other races living their quiet lives across Hyrule. They know little, if anything, about the Zonai, and even less about their own twisted, dark history.It's a shame that ignorance extends as far as their supposed Hero as well.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 88





	Symmetry

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written as part of the BOTW Writers and Such Gift Exchange, for Resident Zonai Enthusiast known commonly as Chaos (chaos-advocate on tumblr, follow them, they're very talented). They basically asked for Zonai content, and my Link brain rot took over and voila! Zonai Link. 
> 
> I have nothing to say for myself. Why hasn't this fic been written by somebody else, sooner? Really, I feel like this content should already exist before I get my grubby little hands on it. Oh well.

The Hylians called them barbarians. 

They whispered about them to their children and showed pieces of their armor in their collections like trophies, boasting of battles they had supposedly won. They spread rumors about the haunted ruins dotted across Hyrule, about the old temples shrouded in darkness and covered in lightning, about the dangerous rainforests of Faron. About child snatchers and men who wore skin for clothes, about cannibals and non-believers, about heresy and blood sacrifice. They dug up their artifacts and claimed them baubles of a lost civilization, took them from their resting places and wrote histories of Hyrule’s barbaric past peoples. 

They called them barbarians.

But they also believed them to be extinct, so really, one couldn’t trust the opinions of the pasty folk too much, now could they? 

The Hylians were afraid of them. That was the truth of it. Afraid of their knowledge of the land, of the spirits which occupied it, afraid of the real goddesses of this land. And so they hid behind their superiority, behind their lies, and behind their stone goddess.

Running about with their heavy clothing and unnecessarily clanking jewelry, whining about the heat in the desert or the cold in Tabantha’s snowfields. Buildings all made of dreary smooth stone and always snatching up more of the fields for more of the same grayish structures. Food so bland the most colorful it got was the fruitcake. Telling stories of sky people and talking swords. Heroes and Princesses in crystals. Some goddess, now a girl, then a goddess, fighting demons and gifting them all the land in sight.

Fools, the lot of them. 

The Zonai (for that was their name, or at least the one that remained, no matter how many times the Hylians ‘lost’ it to time) were as opposite to these Hylians as they possibly could be. They were nothing alike. In temperament, in history, in appearance. All of it. 

Where the Hylians were fair haired and fair skinned, the Zonai were closer in complexion to the Gerudo, though they shared little else with the queens of the desert. Only a passing glance would mark some Zonai as potential Gerudo. A hard look would always differentiate the two. If anyone caught sight of them long enough for a hard look, that is. Even the fairest of the Zonai were still darker than the most weathered of the Gerudo. They were shorter, too—usually, at least. No other humanoid race of the continent came even close to the amazing height of the Gerudo.

But they could not blend with the hidden Sheikah either, lacking their distinctive white hair and again, too dark in complexion for the attempt to ever merit for long. It was a depressing reality, given the former closeness of their relations. The Sheikah of old had once been quite closely aligned with them. Their technology ran quite close to the magic of the Zonai. The two tribes had once been quite good friends. Before they’d had their culture stolen away and their people pressed into one lonely village too far away from their home to really mean anything. 

Damned Hylians. 

By far the most intense differences came between themselves and the Hylians, predictably. Historically, they came from vastly different...well everything, really. The Zonai had cared for Hyrule since before the Seven Heroines. Hylians had dropped from the sky just a spare few millennia ago, and decided that their goddess had given them the plains. Nevermind that three goddesses had preceded this supposed Goddess of All, and nevermind that several other peoples had lived in this land for centuries before the pale Hylians’ arrival. 

Death had followed them. Demise and darkness and the death of so many had followed them as they carved their palaces out of ugly gray rock and paved roads and somehow they managed to convince the other races that they held domain here. Rather than any of the many others who had preceded them. 

As if anyone but the goddesses could claim the land anyway. 

But the Hylians claimed the land regardless, then plowed over all of the beauty, all of the splendor, just to build their monstrous castles and needless roads. They blasted holes in mountains and carved their symbols on everything. Pushed the people who had cared for the land since its beginnings off of it, or worse, killed them for it. And ever since, the Zonai had been forced into direct or indirect conflict with them, always fighting for space, for remembrance. At this point, it left the Zonai to wander and the Hylians to fester.

Where the Hylians were settled, the Zonai wandered. They built, true, but when seasons shifted and it was time to continue on, they left unbothered. Who was there to impress beyond the goddesses anyway? And they cared little for structures of stone and mortar. It was better to keep moving, to ensure their survival for another turn of the stars, than to cling to their beautiful monuments and labyrinths. 

Where the Hylians had been clustered about their dreary buildings and wandering the same dirt trod roads for years, the Zonai had been accustomed to quiet existence in hidden places for centuries. It was almost amusing how quickly ‘civilization’ forgot about them, beyond their most obvious ‘ruins.’ 

Where the Hylians blasted apart the land to build, the Zonai built around it. Their temples were hidden, bending with rivers and behind cliff faces, sunken into canyons and in the hearts of mountains. The goddesses made plenty of space for them to work with. There was no need to tear into the earth for more. 

And where the Hylians liked to simper and philosophize and delegate their warfare to whatever tribe they currently oppressed, the Zonai were much more accustomed to taking matters into their own hands, thank you. 

There was a chance, of course, that this was why they faced so little direct conflict these days. To be fair, few knew of their existence any longer. The Hylians were so ignorant they would likely doubt if the entirety of the Zonai amassed at their gaudy gate. The Sheikah were in hiding, or in service to the Hylians, their wayward brothers holed up somewhere in the desert. 

The Gerudo stayed within their city. The Gorons were unreachable. The Rito too short lived. The Zora might have remembered, but their closeness to the Hylian royal family promised little. If they did recall the Zonai, it was not likely to be in a positive light. 

For many cycles of the seasons, these had all been positive things. Peace time was never guaranteed, not on occupied land, but for several turnings of the stars, the world was quiet. Hylian ignorance meant the lack of Hylian attack, or more threateningly, Sheikah attack in the name of the Hylians. It meant safe hunting, safe traveling, and the ability to send out a few of their youngest to trade supplies where it was possible. It meant returning to the Spring of Courage and repairing some of the damage that had been done to it, offering the prayers as they were meant to be offered, rather than under the cover of darkness in an unnamed field or hidden in the heart of their labyrinths. 

Perhaps they ought to have known change was in the wind when the golden spirit flew wherever they roamed. Or perhaps they ought to have known when the world seemed cleared away of Hylians and other nuisances as they traveled back to their home in Faron. Or perhaps the sign might have been the convenient ease of such travel, compared to some of their more desperate attempts in the past. 

Really, the Goddesses might as well have spelled it out in the stars for them, but even they were subject to the same fallibility as their silly Hylian brethren, at least once every few turns of the seasons. 

Either way, it took the strange appearance of an otherwise unaccounted for child in their midst for the wise Zonai to realize what all this posturing and fanfare from Farore had really meant. And whether they felt a little silly after that, well. No one needed to know anything about that.

Still...they had to wonder what exactly the goddesses were plotting, dropping this strange little boy into their midst as if he had always been there. Really. He couldn’t be more than four or so, and he just wandered along with the rest of the children in the camp, unconcerned by the children’s staring or the adults’ gaping. He watched them with his strange blue eyes—the only feature _off_ about him, really—quiet in a way that spoke far more to his oddity than his silly _Hylian_ blue eyes, and somehow, slipped right into their lives. 

In a hilarious turn of events, it was Eth who found him first. 

The hilarity came from Eth’s general disinterest with these sorts of things. They spent the majority of their time fiddling with further protections on the warriors’ armor, or seeing how much power could be forced into an old fire rod before it combusted in their hands. Other times they could be found helping craft or repair the weapons or doing other odd jobs demanded by the rest of the tribe when particular power was required. If there was one thing Eth had in abundance, it was magical power. 

Given the general chaos which they brought to most of the hours of their days, most of the mothers kept their little ones well away. Not that Eth minded, typically. It was quieter without little ones running around anyway. And even they weren’t foolish enough to attempt complex weaving of magic with a screaming toddler at their feet. 

Particularly for this endeavor. When the tribe had last passed the Lomei to the north, they had cleared it of several beasts, including several wizzrobes who had taken up the shrine’s pedestal. Their weapons hadn’t suffered much damage in the ensuing fight, thankfully, which meant they now fell to Eth to tinker with. 

Ideally, the fire rods would take some of the burden of scavenging flint off the runners, and the ice rods would help with the bokoblins that were becoming all the more common to see in the wilderness. 

It was the thunderstorm rod which interested them the most, however. Unlike the fire and ice rods, with their single gem and flimsy handles, the thunderstorm rod promised far more damage. It was significantly larger, with a thicker handle and much larger gems at the base and top. Energy already crackled menacingly across the surface, but the gem in the center was cracked, spitting sparks at them whenever they got too close. 

Eth was anything but a quitter. They’d wedged the rod into the dirt and squatted in front of it for a good ten minutes now, hands clenching and unclenching as they glared at it. The odd flicker of strange green light would sometimes fizzle around their fingers, as wayward and fast as their thoughts but just as dangerous as the scowl they currently wore. 

Such a scowl would have likely been enough to scare off some of the flightier children. That, and the look of concentration in their dark eyes. 

And so Eth did not see the bundle of furs currently approaching them until it had latched onto their ankle. 

They jolted upward, but the kid—because they could now see it was, in fact, a child—held tight, seemingly unbothered. They couldn’t make out much about the kid beyond a dark haired head, seeing as they had their head buried in their furs. 

“What the—” they lifted their leg a bit, thunderstorm rod temporarily forgotten in the face of child-shaped distraction. “Kid, get _off.”_

The kid looked up at them, and _that_ was when things got _weird._

The kid’s eyes were _blue._

They jerked at the sight of those eyes, something deep and instinctual telling them _turn tail and run,_ but the kid only blinked and watched them back. 

A heavy pause fell, dense enough in the humid Faron air that Eth had long enough to blink themself out of their silly stupor and notice several equally as important things. 

Firstly, this was _a child,_ and therefore did not require the sort of running or fighting a full sized, hostile Hylian did. _They weren’t going to fight a child, regardless of what sort of child they were._

Secondly, the child was wearing furs. Granted, not the same as some of the other children—in fact, they looked...old, if they were honest. But still, furs, and with the markings that were distinctly Zonai. Hell, the kid had war paint on. _Even if the designs were a bit...odd…_

And thirdly, and perhaps most interestingly, the child’s skin was the same dark brown as their own. Their hair, while perhaps a bit more wild than was typical to the children they had seen— _and really,_ they thought, _what did they know?—_ was the same deep red as the sky when the mood bled red. 

Eth stared at the kid. The thunderstorm rod crackled from its place in the dirt. The kid stared back. Faron’s wind blew a hard gust, but neither of them moved. 

“What the _fuck.”_

******

“Of all the things to say to a child, Eth, _really?”_

“Well I wasn’t exactly thinking straight—”

“Darling, I don’t believe you’ve ever had a coherent thought.”

_“You take that back.”_

Thea shook her head at them, beaded hair clacking against the bone of her headdress, not even bothering to look up from the washing. Her coverings were pulled up high on her arms, watery lines of old paint dripping down her skin in streaks of red and purple. It made the water run a murky maroon-gray as it flowed down the river away from them. 

She hardly seemed to notice. Their sister had never been one to be overly concerned with unnecessary details, as she deemed them. She was a woman of hard work and direct action, bright smiles and sharper snarls, as dangerous with a scrubbing brush as a bone club. How she had ended up on washing duty again, rather than hunting, Eth did not know. If anyone asked them, they would always delegate her to the fiercest of hunts. 

But Thea thrived wherever she could attack a task with vigor. Today it was washing. Tomorrow, it might be dinner—an overspiced and potentially inedible affair—or what she coined ‘child wrangling.’ Wherever she was, though, her presence was felt and felt strongly. 

And so it came as little surprise that the pile of completed washing next to the river bed towered higher than they could ever remember seeing it. She continued scrubbing all through their explanation, only glancing up once to eye the child carefully before shrugging and going back to cleaning. 

“Really, Eth, what do you expect me to do?” she asked after a moment, sounding an odd mix between amused and exasperated. It was her permanent tone. “I’m telling you, the little one is none of ours. And you keep talking with a filthy mouth like that and he’ll copy you.”

Eth snorted and rolled their eyes. “No he won’t. Kid doesn’t talk.” They looked over at the kid, who was fiddling with a bright blue bead on his arm guard. “Right, kid?”

He only blinked at them, still playing with the bead. Eth smirked and turned back to their sister. 

“See?”

She tsked, scrubbing furiously at the teeth of a bloodied headdress. Whose it was, Eth could not remember. “I seem to recall a certain someone refusing to speak at that age,” their sister said in a sing-song voice. “Staring at everyone all dark and brooding. You sent Papa into a tizzy every day.”

“I talked!”

Thea laughed, and briefly looked up at them, her dark eyes twinkling with mirth. “Only when you were hungry.” She looked at the child. “Well, little one. Are you hungry?”

The little boy looked up at her curiously, strange eyes wide. Then he shook his head. 

She smiled and gestured her brush at his little head. “See? At least he understands us.”

Eth grumbled something dark and incoherent before shaking their head. “What do I do with him?”

Thea smirked and went back to the stained furs she’d been scrubbing at. “Surely _you_ can think of ways to entertain a child?”

“You know that’s not why I’m here.”

“He isn’t ours,” she said again, casually, as if speaking about an axe they found in a tree stump rather than a _breathing, blue eyed child._ “Unless someone has managed to hide a child from me for the last...several years. Which is not possible. So he is not ours. But he’s just a boy.”

They did it like what her tone implied. “I _know_ he’s just a boy. I wouldn’t—not even to—I _wouldn’t.”_

“I know that, darling. But he really _isn’t_ ours. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“If he’s not ours then where did he—”

“Perhaps he got lost,” she shrugged. “They have been known to chance a journey through Faron, even this deep. And I find myself doubting their child rearing skills. He might have wandered off.” They scrubbed again, then froze. “Or...perhaps not.”

Eth frowned and glanced at the kid, who was watching her with a curious expression. “Thea?”

She met their eyes and matched their frown. “I would take him to Edon. He knows the stories better than I do. I only remember the few the little ones like best at bedtime. Not...not the one I think this is.”

The look in her eyes was unsettling—shaken, one might even say nervous. It was a look that didn’t belong on Thea’s smile-lined, battle ready face. It unnerved Eth, more even than the boy’s strange blue eyes or pressing silence. After a moment, though, it passed as she looked back to the river water, scrubbing fast at the headpiece again, perhaps as a distraction. 

Eth took the kid by the hand again, ignoring how the little boy looked up at them curiously. “Come on, kid. Let’s go find Edon.”

The kid offered no reply (not that Eth was really surprised by his silence, anyway), only blinked as they dragged him back into the trees, away from the river and back toward the cliffs. 

Faron was as soggy as it usually was, foliage thick enough along the ground to do away the few paths Hylians had ever tried to carve through its forest. The trees loomed all around them, their fan-like leaves casting more than enough shade to take the edge off the heat of the day. 

It was the wind that did the most to help, of course. The breeze, while not exactly cool, moved the air enough that it wasn’t as pressing as it was deeper into the forest. Its breath through the trees joined the cacophony of other sounds to create a din as impressively loud as it was pleasant. Birds calling, and other little creatures hiding out in the higher trees, and the river joining the falls in the distance, and the wind rustling the palms around them all clattering together into one muddled song of nature’s breathing. 

At one time, this forest had been a more permanent home. Before they had been all but driven away, forced out, left to scatter like the winds and permanently wander. They couldn’t settle for very long...not without drawing undo attention, at least. 

Some of the structures still remained. Those oldest ones, the stone monuments and the Spring, were in the best shape. Most of the old homes in the trees were in disrepair or burned. 

Hylians had burned quite a bit, a few centuries back. And they hadn’t bothered to rebuild most of it. Too risky. The Hylians might not have often come through here, but the chance of any of them happening across their homes was too great to ever attempt it again. At least not here. 

Not that the kid seemed to notice any of that. He kept close to Eth’s side, looking around occasionally with curious eyes. In the time of the walk, some fifteen minutes or so, Eth noticed another few peculiarities about the kid. 

For starters, he was completely unbothered with where they were. Eth has heard Hylian kids—and even Gerudo—from time to time complained endlessly about the muggy air of Faron, how it pressed down with heat and made their clothes sticky. But this little guy...his bare feet never caught on rocks or roots, the occasional burst of burning sunlight never bothered him, nor did the stickiness of the air or the loud cries of animals all around them. He walked along, clinging to Eth’s hand, but otherwise completely and utterly unconcerned.

It was almost unnerving. 

They tried not to let it bother them, either way, and kept to the invisible path back toward the camps. The little one followed right after them, calm and silent and unsettling as ever. 

******

“Come on, kid, keep up.”

The boy huffed, hopping over a log and stomping along after Eth, conveniently ignoring the odd look they gave him for the brief emotion he’d displayed. Other than little microexpressions and that brief huff, the boy had been virtually stoic. His attitude was so unlike what Eth expected— _granted, they really didn’t know much about children—_ that to see him react now seemed almost more odd than his previous behavior.

“We’re almost there, don’t worry,” they muttered, taking his hand as they came within view of the main campsite. “See that big cave right there?”

The boy perked up, standing on his toes to look where they pointed. He squinted through the trees for a moment before nodding. The cave in question was little more than a large gash in the wall, from this angle, but the dark slash was clear against the reddish stone of Faron’s cliffs. A few figures were loitering around the entrance, bone covered clubs loose in their hands. One had their furs in quite disarray, a sure sign that some sparring had likely occurred there recently.

“That’s where we’re headed,” Eth went on, pulling the kid forward a bit so they could keep walking. “Edon’s likely in there, with the rest of the warriors. You be sure to be good in front of Edon, okay? He’s busy, and we don’t want to bother him too long.”

Surprisingly, the boy nodded, a little frown turning his expression down. He worried at the strap holding his bottoms up, fiddling with the old metal buckle in the middle as if he were nervous. 

“None of that,” they said, taking his fingers away from the buckle before he could pull it apart. “Nothing to worry about. Edon might be gruff, but he’s not going to hurt you.”

He seemed a little appeased by that, and let Eth pull him along once again. The little crowd of bored looking warriors at the cave’s entrance glanced over but were distracted enough by their own conversation to not bother them as they ducked their way past and into the dim light of the cave. 

The cave itself was larger on the inside than its entry suggested. Roughly ten or so people were sitting around a fire inside, which offered far more consistent light than the stray beams of sunlight through the cave entrance. All the people around the fire were older than Eth, and far more decorated for it, their armor and helms painted in shades closer to red than to purple. 

No one’s markings, however, were a deeper red than Edon’s.

He sat cross-legged near the center, hands resting on his knees. His signature scowl was firmly in place, made all the more intense by the harsh shadows cast by the flickering firelight. He was not the oldest among them, but he was the de facto leader of the past several seasons. The armor he wore marked that distinction in deep red, great slashes of paint across his arms and over the water buffalo skull atop his head. He had a weathered face like the great oaks of Hebra, with a broad nose and dark eyes, darker than even the deepest of nights. Many, from warriors to children unfortunate enough to stumble across him after an unfortunate hunt, would say that his glare would take the skin off a bokoblin, easy.

That glare focused on Eth with almost frightening quickness, but softened in recognition right away. He still looked annoyed, unfortunately, but no skinning would occur for the moment. 

Small victories had to be taken, they guessed.

“Eth,” he greeted flatly, not a question, really, but not a statement either. His eyes briefly flicked to the child, who was peering up at the cave’s high ceiling. “And...guest.”

One of the others around the fire snorted, and the boy looked down from where he had been distracted. 

The air seemed to die, right about then. If there had been any mirth in Edon’s expression before that moment, it quickly left, sucked away by the calculating, nearly battle-ready scowl he now wore. For several seconds he did nothing but stare at the boy while the others showed various states of shock, fear, and even downright malice. Though none of them, not even the one who had snorted just a moment before, would dare to make a move unless Edon did something first. 

What felt like an eternity later, he tore his eyes from the child and looked back up at Eth. He said nothing yet, but the question, nigh accusation, was clear in his expression. 

“We’ll finish this discussion later, I think,” he muttered.

He had addressed no one directly, but the others around the fire got the message quite clearly. With speed rivaled only in an actual battle, they all practically fled the cave, brushing past Eth and the boy with near panic. Edon hardly seemed to notice, back to staring at the child with unabashed interest and suspicion. But he only moved after the rest of the warriors had left the cave, getting to his feet and grabbing the long, carved stick resting against the back of the cave wall. With it in hand, he walked around the fire and came within a few feet of them. 

“Where did he come from?” he asked rather bluntly.

Eth shook their head. “He just...appeared.” 

He frowned all the more severely. “He appeared.”

“Yes. I don’t know where he came from before that, and he hasn’t answered any of my questions. He grabbed me while I was working with the thunder rod. From the Lomei, remember?”

Edon hummed thoughtfully, before crouching in front of the boy, keeping a grip on the walking stick. “I remember. I warned you about tempting the goddesses with these sorts of things.”

They rolled their eyes, out of view of his piercing gaze. “I doubt my magic had anything to do with the boy’s appearance.”

He looked up at them sharply, eyes narrowed menacingly. “Your confidence may be your ruin, Eth, regardless of what your sister claims. And you cannot deny the convenient timing. The goddesses do not allow for coincidences in matters like this.”

Eth scowled back at him even as he turned away, wishing they had found him in a better mood. When he found the chance, he had an easy manner and a wide smile, though his mouth was currently caught in a pensive grimace. It matched his apparently soured mood well.

“Where did you come from, little one?” he rumbled, barely more than a murmur and really only half directed at the child. 

The boy cocked his head at him, strange eyes wide. Then he half turned and pointed back the way they came. 

Edon’s expression shifted toward bemused, a brief quirk of the lips and a raise of an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

He nodded. 

“And where were you before that?”

Such a simple question, but it seemed to weigh the boy down instantly. His eyes seemed older than time, then, and his face had lost its pleasant neutrality, replaced with a look so worn and full of sorrow it was as if an embattled warrior had replaced the child who had just stood before them. It gave the faded war paint—red, too red—on the child’s cheeks a disturbing new context. 

The boy fidgeted for a moment, looking down at his bare feet, wiggling his toes in the dirt. Then he shook his head. 

Edon sighed. “You do not know?”

He scowled and shook his head again in denial before dropping to the ground in front of them. The dirt was loose here, and thankfully not too wet—good enough for the boy’s finger to cut a clean path through it as he drew something on the ground. Three lines, a simple triangle, then—

Eth stumbled back a step, away from the symbol glaring up at them from the dark dirt of Faron’s jungle. He heard Edon take a sudden breath in, but beyond that, he gave no indication of recognition or surprise. Though his eyes were as fixed on the icon as Eth’s. 

The boy stared down at the triangles as well, the battle-worn exhaustion still lingering in his eyes, his head bowed so low that his hair obscured much of his face, a blood red curtain separating him from them. He was so still he could have passed for the statues at the shrine, or the lanterns at Thyphlo. Never before had his inability to speak been more felt. 

After a moment of silence long enough to be painfully thick in the air, like the build up before a crack of lightning, the boy sniffed, wiped at his nose, and pointed at the triangle he’d drawn. He nodded, as if this was all the explanation needed.

It was, and yet it was not. 

Edon recovered much faster than Eth, sighing again with a softer frown than before. “I see,” he muttered, though he didn’t sound as sure as he likely meant to sound. 

The child did not seem to mind or even notice, all of his attention still occupied by the symbol scrawled in the dirt. 

“Well little one,” he continued, a bit more composed than before. “It appears we are quite stuck with you, eh?”

That got the boy’s attention, and he looked up into Edon’s worn face, eyes calculating and careful, still as strange and old as they had been since he asked where he had been. They watched each other for a few seconds before Edon pushed back to his feet.

“Eth,” he called. “Go and find your sister. A quite drastic change of plans is in order.”

They nodded, more than happy for the distraction. “What about the boy?”

Edon snorted, fixing them with the combined stare of his amused eyes and the empty sockets of his headdress. “Let me handle our Little Hero. You handle your sister. She is far more onerous.”

Eth grimaced and admitted that point, turning and leaving the cave to go back the way they had come. 

The boy watched them go for a moment, until Edon took his hand. He looked up, and up, and up at him, blue eyes wide.

Edon gave a rare smile. “Come Little Hero. We have much to discuss, I believe.”

He led the child out from the cave once again, past the (far more curious, now) group of warriors, down another virtually invisible path, though this time, curving north, back into the shade of the forest. Hugging along the river—where even the most intrepid of Hylians would lose their way and find themselves washed back into the basin miles downstream—was an old, overgrown dirt “road” of sorts, moss covered and hidden by fallen palm fronds. It was certainly clearer than the muscle-memory path Eth had taken to bring the child to Edon, but it was by no means clear to those who did not already know it was there.

Not that the Little Hero seemed to mind. He followed along with the same casual interest as he had before, though he did hold tightly to Edon’s hand. He practically bounced along at his side, looking around once more with what seemed to be more sincere interest. 

It was a look of intrigue which was mirrored in Edon’s own furrowed brow as he observed the boy. It was far from a common thing for a strange child who looked too much (and too little) like them to simply appear in their midst as if dropped from the sky. Nothing like this had ever happened, and as far as he could remember, no legend spoke of something like this occurring. The Hero, simply appearing one day? 

But the Hero among the _Zonai?_ He was meant to be _their_ Hero, not the Zonai’s. The Zonai had no heroes. Only oppressors and their own people, scrounging a meager existence in hiding, forced to leave their labyrinths and springs to return to nature, or to the hands of pillagers and “explorers” who saw nothing more than a chance to steal their offerings and plant their own traps and nonsense, paving the paths for monsters and other demons to make homes of their holy places. 

And wouldn’t experience tell him that these trespassers’ Hero would be just as against them, steeped in their “myths” and their lies, believing whatever they told him and doing more damage to the Zonai than good. To have the Hylians’ Hero come to them, as _one_ of them...

The goddesses were up to something, that was for certain. Just what they were up to, well. He wasn’t foolish enough to take a proud guess. All there was to do was ask for guidance, and keep the child safe from the dark forces likely cropping up elsewhere in Hyrule. His appearance, even among their own, could mean only one thing after all.

Demise was coming, and swiftly at that.

******

The Spring of Courage was among their oldest structures, and unfortunately, among those in the most...disrepair. Its position tucked deep into Faron’s forests afforded it some protection from pillagers, and its age meant that the worst damage had long passed. The broken stones and collapsed side chambers were not destroyed by mere interlopers. A direct conflict had brought the dragons’ hands down from their perches, had dropped its maw to the earth and blocked up the beautiful entryway with debris and broken land. There had once been a beautiful paved courtyard, great pillars and clear water, all leading up to the dragon statue, and the spring sheltered within it, plants blooming, and fairies and other spirits gathering there.

But the Hylians had ruined it all, as they always did. They brought their stomping armies marching in and destroyed it all, dropping their goddess statue down in the center as if she owned the place. The pillars were broken, the great dragon collapsed or blasted apart, the wildlife chased off and taken over. The Spring fell, and the Zonai had been forced to flee, scattering into the protection of Faron’s jungle, taking what they could and leaving the rest with hastily prayed apologies. 

Any people stupid enough to invoke the wrath of Farore were fools. It came as little surprise to the few Zonai who had lingered after that battle nearly a century ago that the spring dried up and the sky rumbled with lightning. The Hylians stared up at the sky in wonder and fear as it churned and sparked, looking to their dismal gray goddess to protect them. 

But it was not to be. Mere moments after their supposed victory, the Hylians found themselves chased from the ruined Spring, lightning cracking apart the ground behind them as Farore took back what was rightfully hers. Some of the soldiers would even claim they had seen a dragon, gold like the lightning but fast as the river, flying through the sky above as they ran back to their bases and camps. Just like Thundra, the Spring was blanketed in thunder and lightning at nearly all hours of the day, drowning the river in stormwater and leaving the stone dragon weather-worn and covered in damp moss. 

Stories of that battle, and of Farore’s wrath which followed it, were still told around their fires. They were a favorite among the children. The excitement of the goddess’s display of power made many of the children pay closer attention to the great golden dragon sometimes spotted flying over the falls and the lakes. Though such excitement did little to repair the damage done to the Spring itself, it was heartening nevertheless. 

But such remembrances were better saved for their designated days, not now. Not when they were leading the supposed Hero to the Spring. 

It had taken several days to reach the Spring, and to pick their way through the rubble with the young one in tow. The boy was surprisingly adept at handling the terrain, climbing over crumbled pillars and sloshing through the mud with ease, if not downright giddiness. While some of their more skeptical members grumbled and clambered over the obstacles with clear reluctance, the Little Hero bounced along after Edon and Eth, scrambling up the hills and splashing in puddles at every opportunity.

Eth had already tried to stop him from doing _that_ too much. “It’s too early for all this jumping,” they grumbled, lifting the boy out of another puddle and looking him over. “You’ve washed all your paint off! Again!”

The boy squirmed, but said nothing. He had not said anything at all, as a matter of fact. Only watched them all quietly as they traveled and slipped his way into their routines as if he had always known them. It was almost unsettling, if the boy didn’t have such a cheerful disposition in general. He’d been so cheery, in fact, it was almost too easy for them to forget the way he had looked at Edon in the cave. 

But the look was far from gone. It was fleeting, now, when it came, only a moment’s lapse when the boy would go still and quiet by the river edge, or stare off at the sky for just a bit too long, or wake one of them up suddenly in the night, not afraid, but certainly distressed about something. Even at his happiest, the boy had a wildness to him that spoke to things they would never know or understand, a depth to his strange eyes and too-red war paint that couldn’t be explained away by platitudes or chance.

Eth groaned exaggeratedly, giving up the attempt at saving any of the boy’s clothing from being soaked in mud and river water. “You’ll be painting yourself later, I’m not doing it again,” they warned.

The boy only grinned at them, eyes scrunching up, before he succeeded in squirming out of their grip and launching into the next puddle with gusto. As water sloshed up onto Eth’s feet, they groaned again, louder this time. 

“Lighten up, would you?” Thea called from somewhere up ahead, a laugh in her voice. “Let the kid have some fun!”

“Kid, you better splash her next.”

“I heard that!”

“You asked for it!”

“You two are insufferable,” Edon muttered from his own place behind them both. 

“I’m not the one puddle hopping!” Eth sputtered.

“No, but you are the one whining about it.”

The boy splashed in another puddle, launching water high enough to hit Eth’s arms. They made a noise somewhere between a shout of surprise and a growl, and all but launched at the kid, scooping him out of the puddle and lifting him onto their shoulders. Keeping a firm grip on his ankles, they stomped forward.

“There,” they said firmly, nodding. “Your puddles are unreachable! My day is saved.”

He wriggled, trying and failing to get away for a few seconds before sagging against them, leaning his head on their head and frowning petulantly. 

“There will be time for plenty more bothering Eth after we visit the Spring, Little Hero,” Edon assured him. “Chin up now.”

The boy frowned at him for a moment more, then gave in, propping his chin on Eth’s head and staring forward as they walked. The trees were thinning out now, old, moss covered stones emerging from beneath the dirt as the remains of the Spring’s entrance crept up from the earth. 

Just a few minutes later, the old path abruptly opened up, the river splitting into two jaw-like ends before the remains of the great dragon statue. Bright, warm sunlight streamed down, unbarred by trees here. The pillars still stood, mostly, though they were covered in greenery. One had its top missing, while another leaned quite impressively to the east, oozing vines off the side like pouring water. Beyond it, the dragon’s broken maw gaped at them, the interlopers’ ugly gray statue glaring out from the Spring’s interior. On either side were the dragon’s claws, still clamped over the two pillars they protected, though the land near the western claw had collapsed, filling in the hand more than they ever would have allowed. 

With the opening of the pavilion, the path smoothed out, and Thea and the others came back into view. They had already made it past the large pillars, just making their way into the dragon’s mouth as Eth, Edon, and the child came into the Spring’s entryway. Eth quickened their pace to join them, and soon enough, they all stood under the great dragon’s teeth, staring into the ruins of the Spring. 

The interior had suffered less damage, comparatively. The stone there was smooth and free of overgrown moss. Most of the more delicate pillars were intact, though one was broken, the stones in the shallow water on either side of the thin path. At the back, the stone door remained closed _(thank goodness)_ and the wall beyond it looked as sturdy as could be expected.

By far the most disturbing of differences, however, came from the garishly out of place statue now perched atop the old offering place. Where there used to be a place for making prayers to Farore, there now stood the insultingly cheery faced statue of the Hylians’ goddess. The stone of the statue differed from the stone elsewhere in the Spring, both newer and several shades too light to have been placed there by the Zonai, not to mention the clash it bore with the symbol of Farore carved just beneath it. The ugly thing looked so out of place it was a wonder the Hylians had ever thought it a good measure to put it there.

Though, clearly, Farore had not taken kindly to the intrusion. Unlike the rest of the Spring’s interior, the statue of this other goddess was covered in moss and mildew, dark, twisted vines crawling up its base and encroaching on the lumpy wings on the statue’s back. The smile of the statue’s face was nearly worn off, barely a ghost of a grin anymore. The rest of the statue’s detail likely followed a similar path, leading to a pockmarked, overly green excuse of a statue, looking as if it were just a few steps from disintegrating entirely.

They spent a few seconds scowling at the ugly thing before Edon cleared his throat and they all jumped. “Let the boy down, would you?” he grumbled.

Eth did as he told, putting the boy down in front of them and steadying him when he swayed for a moment. The kid looked around, a quiet sort of curiosity in his expression.

“Alright Little Hero,” Edon went on, earning the boy’s attention. His blue eyes were eerily bright in the dim light of the Spring. “This is the Spring. Farore’s Spring. Do you remember what I told you about the Spring?”

He nodded, glancing toward the back of the Spring, where the water pooled and the strange goddess’s statue loomed. 

“If you’re right about where you came from, then Farore will tell us. The Hero is Farore’s champion first, and the other goddess’s hero second. She’ll know if it’s you.”

The boy nodded again, subdued.

Edon nodded back at him with a grim frown, apparently satisfied he understood. “Go on, then.”

With a final (if a bit shakier) nod, the boy wandered off, his bare feet making almost no sound against the stone of the Spring’s walkway. The others stayed where they were near the dragon’s mouth, watching silently and with great anticipation. Edon was grim. Thea’s grin was downright excited. Eth looked like they might be sick. But none of them spoke or moved from the entrance of the Spring. They only watched as the little boy walked to the center.

He hesitated at the last step before the water, perhaps pondering something, though none of them could see his expression to be sure. Either way, it was only a moment of pause before he seemed to steel himself, and stepped into the water. 

The reaction was instantaneous. Outside, the sunlight dimmed as clouds rolled in, thick and rumbling with thunder. The air charged with electricity, and as if by magic, the Spring seemed to come back to life for the briefest of moments. Glimmers of fairy light ghosted around the floor, followed by the blurry forms of real fairies, gliding along the water’s surface before swirling about the pillars. Torches which no longer existed seemed to light themselves, and the interlopers’ goddess statue disappeared, as if it had never been there in the first place. 

Where it stood, there was the ghostly form of a very beautiful woman. Like the dragon spirit which protected her land, her skin and eyes were like gold, her hair similar, though several shades darker. The gown she wore seemed to be made of the skies, shifting and churning like the clouds above them, never still, always flowing. Her mere presence seemed to send little shockwaves through the air, charged with electricity. The power of lightning flowed through everything she came near.

Her golden eyes were fixed on the boy, who stood in the churning water, seemingly calm. However, had the others been in a better position, they would have seen the heaviness in his eyes as he looked up at the goddess whose champion he surely was. It was as if he were looking at an old friend after a long time away, and many terrible things had happened since they had last spoken. To see that look in the eyes of a child barely tall enough to reach the torches was an unsettling sight to behold.

But the goddess must have expected this look in his eyes, for her expression was quite saddened, surprisingly soft for the patron of courage and lightning. She didn’t quite frown, but there was little overt happiness in her face.

“Guard it well, my Hero, as you always have,” she said, in a voice both old and young, echoing strangely in the emptiness of the Spring’s interior. “Guard it well, and you will not fail.”

With that, she bent down, taking the boy’s hand in both of her own and holding it for a moment. Everything, from the water of the Spring to the rumbling storm outside, went still.

In the blink of an eye, Farore was gone. The light of the ghostly torches faded, the water receded away, the fairies flew off to safety, and the storm clouds disappeared, letting weakened sunlight cast shadows through the dragon’s teeth. The false goddess’s statue loomed once more, ugly smile all the more callous in the face of the true goddess’s sadness.

Hyrule’s Hero turned back toward the others, blue eyes bright with unshed tears, left hand glowing white bright with the same triangular symbol he had drawn in the cave.

******

Hyrule changed little, even as the seasons cycled and cycled and cycled. Central Hyrule was tepid and gusty almost every day; the temperature dropped no noticeable amount, even as the other, more elevated regions went snow covered and frigid. Hebra grew uninhabitable, Lanayru subdued, Akkala barren. Only the warmer climates—impassable Gerudo, mysterious Faron, and the appropriately named Death Mountain—survived without any real change to their days.

It was unfortunate then, that she found herself stuck at the Temple of Time, _again._ The dress, while heavy enough on her shoulders to rival the bow currently strung on her wall, miles back at home, did little to shield her from the icy winds which crept their way through the temple’s glass windows. Who knew what fabric the seamstress had devised to use this time for all this flowing nonsense at her feet. Whatever it was (for she never claimed to be an expert on such things) it functioned little beyond its beauty. And the gown was certainly beautiful, and unfortunately fit for the ceremony she found herself witness to, but it was by no means meant for the current climate of the supposed _Great_ Plateau. 

Withholding a sigh, _but just barely,_ she risked a glance away from the man philosophizing at the top of the steps and peered out the window, where thick snowflakes fell endlessly, some sticking to the glass and fogging up her view. From the relative warmth of the Temple, it was beautiful, but she knew from the walk here that it was anything but beautiful when it was drenching your coat and making your hands go pink. She distracted herself for a few moments with the beauty of the snowfall before something else, something far more interesting, caught her eye. 

There was a man—well, more of a boy, really—perched in one of the old apple trees outside, watching the snow as well. He looked to be around her own age, but he was unlike any boy she had ever come across. Despite the cold, he wore no thick cloak or lined tunic, only animal furs, dark and unlike any coat of fur she knew. Atop the furs was a strange set of armor. It appeared to be made of bone, like the horned skull he wore on his head, painted in great slashes of deep red which she desperately hoped were not made in blood. 

His hair was quite long too, mostly braided behind him, and a similar shade of deep red, like the cape Father used to wear for his most special appearances. She had never seen a color like it anywhere else. His skin, however, was dark, darker even than the Gerudo who sometimes came to visit in the summer. It was closer in color to the newly plowed earth of the fields than to the rich gold of the Gerudo. Patterns of a similar shade as what adorned the skull and furs he wore were painted across his face, even reaching down his neck and presumably onto his arms and chest, under his furs. 

Who was this boy? Surely he could not be Hylian—she had never seen anyone whose skin was so dark—and yet he could not be Gerudo, for they had such trouble bearing male children—nor could he be Sheikah, with hair like that. And what was he doing in a tree? By the Temple of Time, no less? 

As if sensing her attention on him, he turned to look at her through the window. Bright, strange blue eyes met deep green, and this time, the Princess could not withhold the gasp that escaped her then.

Without any more care for the man droning on the Temple steps, nor the silliness of her actions, the Hylian Princess dragged up her skirts and fled the Temple of Time, her heeled shoes clacking loudly on the stones. Shouts followed her out the double doors and around the path, even as she leapt over the low stone wall and sunk into the snow with a wet crunch. She did not slow to worry about her dress or the people surely following after her, too focused on forcing her way through the thick snow toward the backside of the Temple, where she had spotted the boy through the window.

Soon enough, she caught sight of the old tree he was perched in. He had lowered a few branches, and was already staring at her as she caught sight of him, one hand holding onto the nearest branch while the other hung loose at his side. His hair hung over his face now, some of it coming loose in the cold wind. But it did nothing to hide the intensity of his gaze as he watched her approach.

Panting a bit from the exertion, and shivering no small amount from the cold of snow soaking into her shoes, she stared up at him in the tree for a long moment of silence. He watched her back calmly, an odd look in his eyes.

“Who are you?” she asked after she regained her breath, still holding her skirts over the snow. 

He blinked at her, his eyes flicking to her hands.

“Where did you come from?” she tried instead.

Something about the question seemed to amuse him, his lips half quirking into a smile of sorts for a brief moment. The expression faded away, though, as the voices of those who had followed her called over the wind. She looked back to see several of the Temple’s staff trekking through the snow to reach her. With a curse under her breath, she turned back to the boy, only to find him quite a bit higher in the tree than he had just been, his eyes on the people stomping their way. 

“Please,” she begged, and his eyes snapped back to her, light and peculiar and _familiar_ in some frightening way. “Please, just tell me who you are? I...I must know. I feel as if we know one another, but I’ve never…”

His expression softened for a moment, saddened in a way which went far beyond a simple explanation. Glancing once toward the still approaching people, he frowned for a moment before dropping to a lower branch, catching himself at the last second so they were only feet from each other. She jumped a little at the close proximity, but he only stared at her again, then down at her hands.

With one hand still holding onto the branch to keep himself aloft, he reached for her own hand with his other. She made no move to stop him, too stunned by the strangeness of the encounter _(and the familiarity of this boy’s eyes)_ to even think of pulling away. He took her hand gently, fingers calloused and rough, and lifted it a bit. 

Her eyes widened and she felt her jaw drop as their hands glowed, blinding bright, with the same _familiar, frighteningly familiar_ symbol, a set of three triangles which had been imprinted in her mind as far back as she could remember, further than that, even. It was the same symbol which hung over her Father’s throne, the same symbol carved into the Sacred Grounds, the same symbol on the floor of the Temple of Time from which she had just fled. 

And this boy had it too. This boy— _who wasn’t a Hylian, clearly, not even close—_ bore the same burden as she did, the same terrible fate hanging over his head as Father kept warning her about. The same task lay before him, the same battle waited for him as waited for her.

Their eyes met again, and there was something different to the familiarity she found in them now, something deeper and heavier which they now shared. _This_ was why this boy was so familiar to her. _This_ was how she knew him.

“Princess Zelda!”

He jerked away at the voice so close, apparently as lost in his own thoughts as she had become, but pulled out of it regardless by the cry of some worried Temple attendant. Before she could say another word, he had jumped back into the sanctuary of the old tree, high in its branches and obscured from their view. 

“Wait!” she breathed, hardly caring for the people now upon her, asking questions and trying to pull her back toward the Temple. “Wait!” she called again.

But with a final, saddened look, the boy turned away, and was gone.


End file.
